Various forms of electronic communications have become ubiquitous in recent years, with internet technologies allowing for new and rapid forms of communications. These forms of communications, such as instant messaging, often rely on a “chat” interface, for transmitting short messages, referred to as “chats,” rapidly between users. These chats often form an extended dialogue between multiple parties, stretching across multiple conversation topics and extended periods of time. Accordingly, while a participant in such a dialogue may continue to submit chats responsive to earlier received chats, it is often unclear what earlier question or prompt the participant is answering or responding to.
Accordingly, a first chat participant may send two questions, and a second chat participant may respond to the second question prior to responding to the first question. This may occur for a variety of reasons. For example, the second chat participant may not wish to respond to all questions, or the questions may have been delivered to him out of order. Alternatively, the response order may have simply made sense to the second user at the time, or the response order may differ for any number of other reasons.
Extended chat sessions therefore often comprise different types of messages, such as questions, prompts, offhand comments, and answers, and typically involve multiple conversations continuing in parallel, with messages, or chats, presented to users in chronological order. This simple chronological ordering can lead to confusion, since it may not be clear what the participant is responding to in any particular chat, particularly where the participants switch between topics rapidly.
For a variety of reasons, in various other communication formats, it is not always clear what earlier comment a particular comment is responsive to. For example, an email may include questions on multiple topics, while a response may respond to those questions out of order. The same issues occur in online commenting systems, and the issues are enhanced when more than two participants are involved in a chat.
There is a need for a messaging method that allows parties conversing to follow multiple conversations exactly, even where those multiple conversations are intertwined and include questions, prompts, and answers that cross each other chronologically.